J: When are you going to vote tomorrow?
A: Before work. Are you taking the kids with you to the polls?
Oo: Ooooo, I want to go to the pool! Me! Me! Me!
Yikes! And thus began our first political conversation with a 3-year-old. We had to lower her expectations -- from splashing around in water to standing in a long line. She asked a bunch of questions -- most of the "Why?" And we soon found ourselves talking, in the simplest terms, about voting and the election.
Oo: I'm scared! I don't want to go to the election!
A & I: Why?
Oo: I don't want them to pick me!
So then we had to explain (again in simple terms) the candidates and our right (and duty) to vote for the one who will do the best job.
Oo: But I'm scared! I don't know who to pick!
And so on and so on. Eventually, it boiled down to this:
A: If you're good standing in line tomorrow, Mommy will buy you a donut.
Tuesday morning I got the kids moving early. I didn't want to miss voting, knowing there was a chance that -- donut or no donut -- Oo was going to refuse to cooperate. We got there without any fuss, but I brought many provisions just in case. Juice boxes, cookies, suckers, crackers and books surrounded the kids in the wagon. I even brought the portable DVD player, should the line be horrendously long. Oo wanted to bring her camera in with her to take pictures; so then we had to have a conversation about privacy.
Fortunately (but oddly) there was no wait at all. Armed with my cheat sheet, I tried to vote as quickly as possible. But it wasn't quick enough for T. Belted in the wagon seat, he began to squawk, "Walk! Walk!" The white-haired woman filling out her ballot next to me tsk'd and muttered under her breath, clearly annoyed that I had my kids with me. But Oo came to the rescue... She climbed out of the wagon and began to push it around to keep T quiet.
As we left the polls, Oo was proud to have earned a donut, and she was anxious to know who had won the election.
J: Hopefully, a good guy will win.
Oo: Where is the good guy? I didn't meet him yet. Is he in Ohio?
J: I don't know where he is right now, but when he's elected he'll move into the White House in Washington DC.
After many more questions -- most of them "Why?" -- and after me trying to explain things using simple and non-partisan language (truly, Dad, I swear it!), we netted out here:
Oo: Why is there a bad guy in the lighthouse? Maybe when the bad guy moves out and the nice guy moves in, we can go to the beach!
And since I'm showing Election Day pics, here is the charming T sporting his voting sticker:
No comments:
Post a Comment